These days it’s highly unusual for a business to not be active on social media. Interacting with customers is a lot more complicated than simply having a presence on social media however.
What you choose to put out there into the online world, says a huge amount about you and your company. This means that using any social media site to spread the wrong message, can be destructive to your reputation.
These are the top 5 mistakes to make on social media.
1. Not identifying an audience
This should always be your start point when considering how to get things going with social media. “Who is this aimed at?” “Who is important to my brand?” “What do they like, need or respond well to?” These are all important questions you should be asking yourself.
Once you’ve established who you’ll aim to engage with, you can create a bespoke message to suit their needs.
This is a key facet of running any business – you need to be able to make your message/ideology/product effective and engaging for your target audience. Without this, you’ll be throwing out uncoordinated ideas that will just seem like junk to potential customers.
2. Being dishonest
No one likes to feel lied to or misguided. This will happen if you start investing in great local causes, but not really engaging with them. For example, you might have an issue if you use a local LGBT parade to promote your products but nothing else – you’ll be seen as leeching off of the community and not having a genuine interest in a cause.
It may be the case that not everyone agrees with the causes you support, but being genuine and honest will still make you stand out from the crowd. Remember though that you’ll want to avoid offending other potential customers.
3. Make dialogue, not war
The main goal of social media sites is to be able to engage with your consumers. Often this involves opening a dialogue with the customer, rather than forcing a sales pitch down their computer screen.
You should avoid looking opportunistic, which ultimately comes down to the words you use on your page. You can do this by highlighting personal connections to the events and causes you promote.
4. Getting all emotional
It’s important to recognise that as a business owner, it’s sometimes hard to become emotionally detached from the company. After all, it’s probably a labour of love that you’ve sunk countless hours and dollar bills into.
This unfortunately means that it can be harder to take criticism, without being emotionally defensive about it. Make sure that when you’re responding to discourse on your social media profiles, that you don’t respond in an over-emotional way. This can damage your reputation further.
5. Letting trolls rule the roost
Many social media platforms have fallen fowl to “trolls”. These are people who post overly negative, offensive and degrading comments in order to cause trouble. It’s important that you maintain a respectable page and don’t allow trolls to hold you to ransom.
One of the tools at your disposal as a business owner, is that you can delete offensive posts. This doesn’t mean deleting every negative post, or those you disagree with. This can work against you if people feel you’re trying to cover up their honest opinions.